I'm studying Computer Engineering and I run a small hosting reseller company and a computer club and am involved in other activities as well. What good software can make me very efficient. I give a high value for a good UX.

UPDATE:

I'm was for something not web based, now I'm okay with web based tools as well. Preferred if it has Android app.

Shopping questions are generally not a good fit on stack exchange. Voted to close as offtopic.
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Rory Alsop♦May 20 '12 at 21:24

Agree shopping question not a good fit. And "very efficient" is not defined well enough to be easily answered.
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Dennis S.May 21 '12 at 17:11

"good UI" is also not well defined, especially among the computer savvy. Do you mean an attractive GUI, or a GUI with lots of features regardless of looks, or a CLI, or a telepathic headset, or a rotary dial?
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asfallowsMay 22 '12 at 13:47

4 Answers
4

Because you said you are into IT, you might want to take a look at taskwarrior. It is an command line tool which can sync across different machines. There is an Android app called "Mirakel".

I prefer taskwarrior because its FLOSS and answers the question "what to do next on project X?" quite well. It also performs well with my personal stlye of GTD (I implement only a few practices of GTD), and in my understanding you can do the whole nine yards of GTD with it.

The tutorial will teach you enough to make good use of the tool in about 30 minutes.

other pros: all the data is stored in plain text; you don't have to give away your data to another party.

In the first bucket, you'll find applications like Omnifocus, Things and Wunderlist. These apps will help to manage your list of things to do and offer varying degrees of organization and planning control. Apps in this category are focused on your own list of tasks and don't do as well at tracking things that other people need to do on a joint project.

I personally use Omnifocus. You can create Projects and organize tasks within each project in sequence or treat them as non-sequenced tasks. The app will display the "Next Action" available to you in a project which simplifies the execution side of work as you are able to focus on what needs to be done next to move a project along. Omnifocus follows the "Getting Things Done" model championed by David Allen.

For project level planning you're looking at packages that help manage projects with multiple people or resources involved. These tend to be focused on scheduling tasks that are measured in days vs. hours or minutes. Project level planning tools also provide a great deal of sophistication in managing task dependencies and provide visualization of critical paths through the project. (A critical path is the one that will extend the project duration if any part of the path gets longer.)

Thanks for the answer. Have you tried out Trello? I just want to know what you think of it.
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AlexFeb 17 at 11:21

@alex, no, I haven't tried trello but it looks interesting. I'll have to check it out. One thing I really like about OmniFocus is the context concept which allows a task to be viewed either as a part of the project it belongs to or in my defined set of contexts. If I'm meeting with someone, I only see the items relevant to our discussion (context) even if they come from multiple projects.
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KenBFeb 18 at 14:16

@alex, I took a look at the Trello website and from what I can tell, using it for GTD process requires time to manage the tool. Articles I saw from people on how they manage talked about moving items around between the Tello boards as they became next actions. OmniFocus handles that motion natively, I don't have to move things around to manage what I'm going to do next. One goal you should have is to spend less time managing your system and more time getting things accomplished. The system should serve you, not the other way around.
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KenBFeb 21 at 15:47

No product, physical or of software, will make you productive by itself. You need a complete process of handling your business, that takes the complexity of your life and turns it into "what should I do at this moment" for all moments. The process itself can not be automated but the parts that don't require judgement calls from you can be made as smooth as possible.
My suggestion:

Process: GTD

Tool: TodoCloud

Anything that gives you the possibility of maintaining a lot of lists that are accessible online and from your electronic device will work. What you write in the lists and what lists you use depend on the process. Other than that, more features usually means less flexible.